Do you use podcasts in your classroom? Are you looking for recommendations to share with families? In today’s post, I have eleven free podcasts for kids to share with you. All of these are ready for you to press play on straight from Google Podcasts — a free podcast player you can access on your web browser.
Now I included “free” in the title of this post because I wanted you to know that all of these podcasts — like most podcasts — are totally free for listeners. And I included Google Podcasts in the title since we’ll focus on this popular podcast player throughout the blog post.
Google Podcasts
You’re probably familiar with both Google and podcasts, but have tried out Google Podcasts yet? There are many different podcast players, and in today’s post we’ll look at this one which makes it easy to play and share podcasts. This isn’t the first time I’ve shared this popular podcast player, but we’re revisiting it here alongside some podcast recommendations.
You can access Google Podcasts by clicking this link. It’s accessible for users with a Google account (like Gmail) or for anyone who opens the webpage (you don’t even need to sign in or have an account). There are lots of reasons why I like this podcast player. In episode 101 of my Easy EdTech Podcast, I share why Google Podcasts is the perfect free podcast player for students.
Accessing Stories in Audio Format
In Chapter 3 of my book EdTech Essentials: The Top 10 Technology Strategies for All Learning Environments, I share ways to help students explore the world. Podcasts — or stories and conversations in audio format — are one way to accomplish this goal. Here’s a quick excerpt from page 28:
Students can learn about another person’s life in many different ways. They might listen to a podcast episode in which a person shares their perspective on a current events issue, read an interview in an online magazine, or watch a video in which someone responds to a question. Students now have seemingly endless access to the ideas and perspectives of people in different parts of the world.
The passive experiences of listening, reading, or watching multimedia content can provide immense value as students learn about the life of someone else. You may curate these experiences for students (see Chapter 2) or provide suggestions about where students can go to learn more about a person, place, or issue. For example, if you are teaching a lesson on biodiversity to middle school students, you might locate interviews with people who live in a community near the Amazon rainforest and can speak about the ways deforestation has affected their lives. The interviews can supplement the conversations you might have with students about the impact on the animals and plants in that ecosystem by providing the perspective of someone’s lived experience.
11 Google Podcasts for Kids
So let’s jump into podcast recommendations you can share with your students, colleagues and families in your school community. To compile this list, I reached out to former podcast guests and friends in the EdTech space who love podcasts, too. When you click on each of the links below, double check to make sure you’re logged into a Google account. This is totally optional, but it will give you an easy way to subscribe and follow along with each of the podcasts that piqued your interest.
K.C. Boyd was a guest on the Easy EdTech Podcast in June of 2021. You might remember our conversation on EdTech in the library, K.C. Shared a kid-friendly recommendation to add to our list:
- Book Club For Kids! with Kitty Felde
Another honorable mention from K.C. is Let’s K12 Better with Amber Coleman-Mortley.
Google Podcasts for Kids
Carl Hooker, author of Ready, Set, FAIL! Provided two recommendations for student-friendly podcasts you can listen to straight from Google Podcasts, too:
Dr. Jennifer Williams joined me as a guest on the podcast earlier this year to chat about climate change education. She has two podcast selections to recommend:
Content Area Connections
Jen shared that she loves Namya Joshi’s focus on STEM and accessibility for ALL young people, and Ayush and Ananya Chopra’s fantastic focus on student activism, the SDGs, and social good for all—teachers, students, and parents!
Jeff Glade joined me on the podcast last year to chat about useful tips for finding podcasts to enhance content. If you don’t follow along with Jeff on Twitter, you’re certainly missing out. He shares lots of favorites with seasonal connections, too. Recently Jeff included a mention of Circle Round, a great podcast for students:
- Circle Round
- Sidedoor by Smithsonian Institution
A couple more favorite kid-friendly podcasts to finish up the list are:
- Brains On! Science podcast for kids
- Wow in the World
- But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids
- Tumble Science Podcast for Kids
In addition to being free to listen to, one of the great things about podcasts is that you can listen to them on lots of different apps. So even though I shared links to Google Podcasts player today, you can also listen to these on popular platforms like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, and Spotify. And many podcasts allow you to press play or stream right from your web browser, too.
